John Updike: The Collected Stories, edited by Christopher Carduff

To reread John Updike is to remember just how upper-middle-class and masculine his fictional universe is. There are so many beaches, summer homes, reclining chairs, dentists, affairs, books, clergy, port and brandy, golf games, and trains to and from cities and suburbs.

But of course, Updike was also a great storyteller and a master of the short story. “Ace in the Hole,” his first, was published in the New Yorker when Updike was only 23, just graduated from Harvard.